State of D101 Games address 2008 pt3 : Monkey

Monkey has really benefited from me pushing to get the ashcan version done for Furnace 2007 back in October last year. Got lots of positive and useful feedback off people. I also have something that with a bit of work can be polished off to the full game. Problem is that because I’ve been focusing on SimpleQuest since then, Monkey has been put aside until that gets done.

Things that need to get done in the next month or two.

Get my background reading done. Basically between now and April all I can read is Monkey related stuff. Mainly Asian mythology books and of course the big Antony Yu four volume translation, which is doing a great job of filling in the gaps that the Arthur Whatley translation leaves (this is the commonly available Penguin version) and has tons of flavoursome description.

More playtesting. Both one shots, GoPlayManchester is a prime candidate as is a couple of private games I’ve been invited to, and a short campaign (5ish sessions) with my home group.

Prod the Mighty Monkey Army for feedback. I pushed out the ashcan back in Oct/Nov of last year and not a peep since then! Saying that doing a playtesting Questionarie for SimpleQuest was really useful for getting feedback, so I’ll be doing the same in the coming weeks.

Sort out Art. I’ve got a couple of leads here that as usual I need to chase up.

So far the plan is to seriously get down to writing in March and get finished for May at the latest. Layout June, and off to Lulu in July so I can get copies to take to Continuum in August..

Its going to be tight. In hindsight I should have never started SimpleQuest, but on the positive doing SQ means that I’ll have more experience of putting a book together before I do Monkey, which will be better as a result. Its now not a question of whether or not the book gets done this year, but how much time I can put in to polish it up into the final book.